By Gordon Lambie
NAFTA is out, and a new deal, currently known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is in. That was the news Monday morning following a year of negotiations on the North American Free trade Agreement that tested the limits of Canada-US relations. Speaking with The Record about the deal on Monday, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and Member of Parliament for Compton Stanstead said that the Government feels happy with the agreement overall.
“This is good news for our Canadian and Quebecois economy,” Bibeau said. “We didn’t want to sign just any kind of agreement; we were ready to not sign an agreement if it was a bad one.”
The Minister pointed to the fact that the news of the agreement caused an immediate improvement in the value of the Canadian dollar as a sign that the agreement had an important impact on the trust of foreign investors in Canada. She highlighted improvements to the cultural exemption in the agreement as well as the preservation of the chapter 19 dispute resolution mechanism as significant wins for the country and for Quebec.
